About

About CCCSH

California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health (CCCSH)

What is the California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health (CCCSH) ?

CCCSH is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that has been on the California landscape for more than 25 years.

The broad core purpose of the California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health is to sponsor and support efforts to ensure that all California children and youth are healthy, safe from harm and are able to grow up to reach their full potential as contributing members of our society. Since it was created, the center of attention priority for CCCSH has been unintentional injury prevention. Additional interests of the organization and its leadership are structured to take on other initiatives addressing the health and well-being of children, youth, and families. Why a primary focus on unintentional injury? For the last 25+ years CCCSH has focused on unintentional injury prevention issues. Here is why:

Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death and hospitalization for California’s children and youth through age 19 years old, and leading injury-related cause of death for infants under the age of one year old. Every ten years in California nearly 10,000 California children and youth lose their lives due to unintentional injury, another 240,000 are hospitalized with severe injuries and more than 4 million are seen in emergency rooms.

Besides the pain, suffering and cost of broken limbs, damaged internal organs and skin, unintentional injury is the leading cause of brain injury.

Preventable unintentional injuries, especially brain injury, is not only a tragedy for the child and their family, but they are also costly. The initial costs of emergency room and hospitalization to treat a child with a brain injury is more than $5 million. This does not take into account the extraordinary impact a brain injury can have on a person’s entire life, nor the continuing cost associated with follow-up medical and rehabilitative treatment, special education, and lost productivity and earnings over the course of a lifetime. Healthcare and wage loss costs involving childhood unintentional injury in California is more than $3.4 billion a year.

The loss of life associated with childhood unintentional injury is around 1,000 children each year, with another 24,000 children hospitalized. This is equivalent to the death of every child from 3 averaged sized elementary schools and the hospitalization of every child from another 62 schools – every year – and all of this suffering is preventable.

The eight current leading causes of childhood unintentional injury are:

  • Traffic related (vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian crashes);
  • Poisoning (primarily from unintentional access to prescription medications);
  • Suffocation (primarily sleep suffocation of infants and babies);
  • Drowning (primarily involving pools and open bodies of water);
  • Burns (primarily from house fires and kitchen incidents);
  • Non-traffic related (kids left in cars, backovers and frontovers on driveways and in parking lots);
  • Falls (including residential building window falls); and,
  • Sports related (primarily concussions, heat stroke, cardiac arrest, and spinal injury).

CCCSH’s Vision, Mission and How CCCSH accomplishes its Mission and Work:

Vision: All children in California are healthy and safe from harm, especially from preventable injury and illness.

The Mission of the California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health is to explore and advance best practice policies, programs and resources to ensure that all children in California are healthy and safe from harm.

How does CCCSH accomplish its work ?

CCCSH’s primary functions support how CCCSH accomplishes its work. CCCSH moves safety, health, public health, state and local initiatives forward by advancing local solutions and statewide policy, linking people and resources, and removing barriers to best practice solutions, programs and policies.

CCCSH provides a setting where experts and organizations can collaborate to improve and protect the safety and health of California’s children and youth.

CCCSH provides leadership and staff support to further collaborative efforts advancing policy, coalition development, research, cross-discipline cooperation, and sustainable resources to support the health and well being of children and youth.

CCCSH provides opportunities for communication and support for cooperative efforts to advance best practice policies and coalition development.

CCCSH provides administrative support, fund development and program oversight for programs and projects advancing the safety, health and well-being of children and youth.

CCCSH creates new partnerships with organizations, businesses, agencies, community leaders, and members, which may not have been involved in childhood safety, health and public health issues.

Major Projects

Below is a list of CCCSH projects for 2018 and 2019. If you would like more information about a specific project you can contact Catherine Barankin, Executive Director ([email protected]) or Steve Barrow, Program Director ([email protected]).

2018 project topics:

  • Technical support for California State Department of Public Health, Safe and Active Communities Branch – Kids Plate local unintentional injury prevention coalition building grant program
  • Leadership support to develop statewide strategic plan for safety seat technician training and local programs
  • Advocating for the return of Department of Education statewide requirement that all school districts have age appropriate safety issues curriculums
  • Development of the next generation of the unintentional injury prevention Project’s “Top Ten” action priorities
  • Implementation of SB 442 (Newman), co-sponsored by CCCSH and signed into law. This measure updates California’s Pool Safety Act
  • Implementation of AB 2007 (McCarthy) co-sponsored by CCCSH and signed into law community sports program/league concussion safety programs and protocols

Unintentional injury prevention strategic plan projects related to 2018 proposed state legislation:

  • AB 3077 (Caballero) School transportation safety issues – bicycle helmet use and school bus stop arm camera technology
  • (SB 1158 (McGuire) Kids Plate and Child Health and Safety Fund updates – funding for CA EMSA child care provider health and safety education and training program responsibilities, increasing funding for DPH unintentional injury prevention Kids Plate grant program, and updating unintentional injury prevention list of priority issues.

Planning for 2019-20 legislation associated with the California Unintentional Injury Prevention Strategic Plan Project:

  • Teen driver safety proposed legislation, moving California’s Graduated Driver License program to cover all first time drivers through age 20 years old
  • Window fall proposed legislation, involving multistory residential buildings, codifying New York City successful window fall prevention strategies here in California
  • Poisoning prevention proposed legislation with requirements for all pharmacies to have medication take back programs, procedures and protocols
  • Sleep suffocation program support for community based safe sleep programs and updating all birthing hospitals protocol for new parent education procedures.